


an anchor, mooring me here

by andibeth82



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Bookstores, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint purses his lips, walking to the back of the store. “You like history?”</p><p>“Not particularly,” she says carefully, dragging a finger across the shelves as she follows him. “But I would like to learn about it, I think.”</p><p>(aka the AU in which Clint is retired from S.H.I.E.L.D. and owns a used bookstore in Brooklyn, and Natasha takes the wrong direction on the subway, and as it turns out, there are a lot of secrets between people who run from their past lives.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	an anchor, mooring me here

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man. I’d like to say that I don’t even know where this fic came from, but that’s not exactly true. I’ve wanted to write a good long AU for these two for awhile, but haven’t had the right motivation. And then one day a few weeks ago, I sat on the beach during a family vacation, and ended up writing about half of this in one sitting. Then it all just got out of hand.
> 
> All the thanks ever to [bobsessive](http://bobsessive.tumblr.com) for beta and for kicking my ass when I needed it. Title is from Kafka On The Shore.

The used bookstore at the intersection of Rockaway Parkway and Avenue L doesn’t get many customers, isn’t overly populated during most hours of the day, and to be honest, Clint doesn’t really care.

He doesn’t have all that big a staff, anyway, if you could call one kid sister a staff at all, and even that had gone to the wayside as ever since the girl with curly hair moved in down the block Clint’s noticed that Kate’s been taking slightly longer lunch breaks and a lot more personal days.

Which was fine, really. Sure, it took him longer to sort the inventory and balance the financial ledger, and sure, sometimes he was there really late at night or really early in the morning. And maybe it was also a bit lonely at times, but there were worse things in life, and Clint’s known most of them firsthand to recognize that he shouldn’t complain about stuff like working long hours and not having anyone around, especially if he’s making decent money and generally keeping himself out of harm’s way.

Such is the case that the first time she walks into his shop, he almost misses her completely. It’s past three on a weekday in the middle of June and the lunch rush of customers has died down, and in the absence of Kate, he’s stuck a lopsided “back in 5” sign in front of the counter while ducking next door to the adjoining café. When he returns, coffee in one hand and key in the other, she’s the first thing he notices, hovering near the shelves between the poetry section and the non-fiction partition.

She’s beautiful (and Clint would hesitate to call anyone beautiful, at least, not so bluntly, but the more he stares the more he realizes that there’s no other word that would be truthful enough to describe her.) It’s her garments that draw his attention first – a thick leather jacket covering a light green tank top, knee-high boots over black leggings with a star-like pattern running up her thighs, and long earrings in the shape of lightning bolts dangling from her lobes. But it’s her red hair, the ruddy curls that cascade over her shoulder in thick waves, that make him stop and almost spill his too-expensive latte all over the floor.

“The, uh…the nightclub is across the street,” he says casually, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door and she looks up at that, half-smiling, the corners of her lips forming half a crescent. Her features make her look delicate – two piercing green eyes, a slim face framed by slightly heavy lips and cheeks with maybe a little bit of a hollow tinge, if you looked closely enough – and she holds herself with the aura of someone shy trying to keep her distance. But Clint can’t help feeling uneasy, like there’s real danger behind her guarded look, like she’s a gun that you’re not sure if you’re supposed to touch because it might actually be loaded and go off in your face by accident.

“You shouldn’t do that, you know.”

Clint frowns, taking a sip of coffee. “Do what?”

“Leave the store unattended,” the girl responds, arching her own brow. “Aren’t you worried that someone’s going to steal something?”

He shrugs. “That’s what security cameras are for,” he says, pointing upwards. (And, okay, maybe the only reason he had bothered to install the stupid things at all was because Kate had sat him down and told him six ways to Sunday how absolutely dumb it was to not have any kind of shoplifting measures, especially since didn’t Clint come from a past where all he did was apprehend bad guys who didn’t know any better?)

The redhead makes a curious noise in the back of her throat. “Some people don’t need security cameras,” she says pointedly, and there’s a hint of sharpness in her tone, something that Clint can’t quite make out because it’s not technically a threat, but it’s not exactly a tease, either. He takes another sip of coffee and swallows down the scalding liquid, letting it burn its way towards his stomach, jumpstarting his senses.

“Well, no one’s stolen anything in five years,” he boasts a little smugly. “Or at least as long as I’ve been the manager here.” He steps back behind the counter and places his cup next to the cash register, leaning forward on his elbows. For all her otherworldly beauty, she looks relaxed, normal, like any other person that might wander into his shop during the day (except, okay, maybe a little more attractive than any other person). There’s a cautious jolt in her step though, one he notices when the door slams quietly as another customer enters and leaves without much fanfare.

“So, can I help you with something?”

The girl regards him silently while chewing on her lower lip, pulling her curls over one shoulder.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, are you looking for a book?” Clint presses again, trying to be more conversational than confrontational, though he’s not sure he’s doing all that good a job. But the girl smiles, and even though Clint can tell it’s not real (and he doesn’t know how, he just _knows_ that despite how authentic it looks, it’s not as genuine as it could be), it fills him with an indescribable emotion that makes his chest hurt.

“I could be.”

She smiles again – that same tight, half-genuine grin – and Clint thinks that if Kate were here, she would’ve definitely started making weird gestures behind the woman’s head at this point. It’s not that Clint’s too dumb to recognize flirting (because if there was one thing Clint Barton knew, it was how to flirt), but the amount of women under forty and over twenty who have walked into his store in the past year are far and few between and, well, suffice to say that since traveling the world or sitting in a bar was no longer an option, he’s been a bit out of practice.

“Any specific interest?” He leaves his coffee on the counter as he comes back around the front, trying not to stare at the way she’s taken her hands from her pockets and crossed them in front of her chest. “Cooking? Fiction?” He eyes her jacket and then her earrings again. “Fashion?”

One half of the girl’s mouth quirks its way up again and when she locks onto his gaze, he catches sight of the dark contour of what looks like a tattoo design winding upwards from behind her left ear, where one of the pieces of her hair is shorter than the rest.

“History, actually.” She twists a curl around her finger and then nods, as if she’s trying to convince herself that her response makes sense. “Russian history.”

Clint purses his lips, walking to the back of the store. “You like history?”

“Not particularly,” she says carefully, dragging a finger across the shelves as she follows him. “But I would like to learn about it, I think.”

“Hmph.” Clint snorts softly as he stands on his tiptoes, scouring the racks. “Not a fan of fictionalized history, I assume. No interest in the Romanov children, Cold War, KGB antics?”

He’s turned away so he doesn’t see her shake her head in response, but he hears the careful hesitancy in her tone that clearly indicates her answer, enough that he doesn’t need to see her face.

“I think I’d like something a little more dry.”

Clint nods to himself, taking in a few moments of silence while he meticulously works his eyes over the varying length and color of spines spanning three shelves, before he plucks out a thick book with colorful pictures over a white background, shoving it into her hands.

“ _A History of Russia_ ,” Clint says with a small grin. “816 pages of it, to be exact. That dry enough for you?”

She doesn’t answer, but small fingers (two rings, he notices; two silver bands on each pinkie but nothing else) clasp the edges of the book as she thumbs through the pages, seemingly entranced by the size and complexity of the tome in a way that Clint’s seen from young children who have never held a book before and are just learning the feel of its pages and bindings.

 _Impossible_ , he thinks next, almost immediately, because he can’t imagine this is her first time holding a book, no matter what her upbringing might be. He’s shaken out of his thoughts as she snaps the paperback shut, the sound reverberating throughout the otherwise quiet store.

“I’d like to buy this, please,” she says a little tightly, holding it up as if it’s some sort of prize. Clint raises his eyebrows and taps at the yellowed sticker on the front, the one that obscures just half of the “R” in the word Russia.

“You got cash? Afraid I don’t accept cards.”

That earns him an odd look but doesn’t stop her from reaching deep into the pockets of her coat. She pulls out a wad of bills, shoving them into his hand, and he can tell by the glimpse of Alexander Hamilton’s face that it’s more than enough for the $15.00 paperback.

“Lemme get you some change,” he says when he finds his voice again, moving back to the cash register. The girl waves her hand around a little loosely.

“Keep it. Don’t bother.”

“Yeah?” Clint stops with his fingers halfway out of the drawer, sliding the bills he had started to procure back into place as the girl puts the book on the counter.

“Yeah. Use it to get more of those security cameras or something.”

For the briefest moment, he feels old habits surface and he’s about to chastise her for potentially stealing. It takes him another moment to realize she’s playing with him, the curve of her shoulders slouching slightly in a show of relaxation, and he suddenly recognizes the tell as an admission of her letting down her guard.

“You have a lot of advice,” Clint says carefully, sitting back on his chair and deciding that her slackening gives him the right to ask the question that’s been sitting on the edge of his tongue since she walked in. “You got a name, too?”

She hesitates just enough for him to notice the way the words catch in her throat, the way they struggle to make their way into sounds; he sees the way she practically forces them out of her mouth as if she’s trying them on for size, as if it’s not something that’s been engrained in her from the moment she learned to talk, unlike most people who answer without giving the question a second thought.

“Natalie,” she says finally, and he’s pretty sure she’s lying but then, how many times did he tell people his real name when he was with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Hardly ever, unless “Agent Barton” counted, and even then he never used that particular designation unless he felt comfortable enough around a target.

Well, there was a first time for everything. And it’s not like he was with S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore.

“Clint.”

He holds out his hand but she doesn’t take it, instead picking the book up off the counter and hugging it to her chest in a way that, if he didn’t know any better, he would think was rather juvenile. Kids weren’t exactly his forte, and Kate was barely a kid, more of a teenager than anything else, though she still found ways to revert to childish behavior more times than Clint had the patience for. But something about the way the girl – _Natalie_ – something about the way she can’t stop touching the book, the way she looks at it as if she’s never had anything that she’s bought to call her own before, endears him for a reason that he knows he would never be able to explain.

“Hey, so, anytime you wanna come back…” He gestures to the peeling sign on the door. “Open til nine every day, even weekends. I’ll dig up some more history books, if you want.”

There’s the same slightly fake smile again, and a sharp glint in her green eyes that looks a little territorial, that vanishes as soon as she slips on a pair of dark sunglasses that she’s unearthed from somewhere inside her garments, and then –

“Thanks,” she returns before she exits the shop, shooting one last look over her shoulder before disappearing into the thick summer air. Roughly two seconds after she’s let the door bang shut with the street noise of blaring sirens and angry impatient drivers, the bell rings again as Kate breezes in. She shakes her bangs out of her face as she throws her sunglasses on the table and leans out the window, training her eyes into the distance.

“Holy shit. _Who_ the hell was _that_?”

Clint groans, shoving himself backwards. “A customer, clearly.”

“Clearly,” Kate replies dryly, rolling her eyes. “You got a vocab that consists of more than three words, Hawkeye?”

“Christ, I told you not to call me that,” Clint snaps moodily, sliding off the stool. “Also, nice of you to show up two hours late.”

“It was America’s birthday and I wanted to walk her to school,” Kate says with a shrug before pausing, putting a finger on her lips. “You would’ve walked that redheaded _clearly-a-customer_ to school.”

“Knock it off,” Clint mutters, rubbing a hand across his eyes as Kate takes a stack of books from the floor and starts climbing one of the ladders against the wall. A few seconds later, he feels a sharp _thunk_ as one of the lighter paperbacks falls harmlessly onto his shoulders, and when he looks up, Kate’s grinning at him through a screen of dyed purple hair.

 

***

 

If Clint were a betting man (and he had never been, not even in his circus days), he would have put all his money on the fact that he wouldn’t see her again. His shop didn’t really get repeat visitors, at least, none that weren’t neighborhood locals, save for the women who came in once a week to browse for their book clubs. And pretty girls like Natalie, well…well, Clint’s sure that they have better things to do than hang around a musty used bookshop at the end of the L subway line with an ex-carnie agent.

But then about three weeks later, when it’s past six and Clint’s starting on the day’s paperwork that he’s neglected for no reason other than he just hasn’t wanted to deal with crunching numbers, she walks through the door again and plants herself in front of the counter, two silver rings and dirty fingernails staining the landscape of his vision.

“Well, hi.”

He has to stop himself from visibly reacting when he looks up because she looks different this time and he’s not exactly sure why. Aside from her hair, which is now bright red and shorter, less curly, wavier than the tight ringlets that he had previously been so fond of, everything else about her seems familiar enough – the worn leather jacket, the earrings, the black leggings that, he notes the more he looks at them, have seen much better days.

 _It’s her face_ , he finally realizes after about a moment of too long contemplation. Her eyes are still the same light green but they’re less vibrant, almost dull, missing the spark that he had latched onto during their first meeting. Her face is paler, her cheeks more sunken, as if she’s getting over an illness that has since kept her bedridden, and she clutches her arms to her body tightly, like she’s trying to hold herself together – like if she doesn’t, she’ll fall apart in pieces on the floor of his shop.

“Hi,” she says quietly, and her voice is gravelly, and she clears her throat before lowering her head. This time, her response doesn’t come out quite so hoarse. “Hi.”

“Come back for another history lesson?” Clint asks, carefully keeping his gaze off her face, trying to mentally smooth out the lines of worry he knows are becoming prominent on his forehead. If she notices, she doesn’t bother to say anything, instead raising her head to stare straight through him at the wall behind the desk.

“Not exactly.”

“That bad, huh?”

He offers her a smile that doesn’t get returned and Clint suddenly feels uneasy, like there’s something missing, something off, like something isn’t quite right, but damned if he can put his finger on it.

 _She’s a stranger_ , his brain reminds him, almost tiredly as silence fills the space between them. _A stranger whose life you have no idea about._

(And sometimes, he really hates his brain.)

“It was interesting,” she says when she finally speaks again, turning in place and scouring the shelves of books. “A good learning experience. Thank you.”

“Uh. You’re welcome,” Clint answers slowly, still feeling like he’s trying to talk underwater, like everything is made of molasses and he’s struggling to break the surface, to gain some clarity and clear his head. He closes his eyes just enough to refocus himself, boosting the energy in his voice so that he sounds more lively and less timid.

“So what can I sell you on this time?” He asks, racking his brain. “World literature? Young adult? Hey, maybe some psychology?”

“No,” she says sharply, her shoulders tensing from behind, and the strength of her voice makes him jump because it’s the most emotion he’s heard from her since she arrived. In the space of the time it takes him to recover, he manages to compose himself and shoves his hand in his pockets, fiddling with the laundry quarters he’d forgotten he’d stuck in his pants.

“Okay, so, no psychology. Fair enough. Not exactly the most interesting thing to read about, anyway.”

She doesn’t respond but he notices the way her body language has changed, the way she’s suddenly become tense, like something that you needed to carefully move because it could shatter if you moved it the wrong way. Clint bites down on his lip, watching the way she maneuvers herself, skittish in the wake of his comment, until she’s tucked her body against the counter with her fingers white-knuckled against the edges. It’s a familiar position, Clint thinks, before realizing it’s one he recognizes from his days at S.H.I.E.L.D. – a defensive stance that kept you alert and on edge, should any possible danger strike.

“Hey, uh…I think we got a new shipment in last night,” he offers gently. “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll see what I can dig up.” He backs away, figuring that maybe a few moments alone will give her time to calm down, enough so that at least they can have a conversation without him feeling the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up. It’s almost starting to feel like she brings parts of her wherever she goes, parts of whatever mysterious life she leads that follow her and make their presence known somewhere else – first intrigue, and now danger.

And, well. Clint has lived his whole life on the front lines, inviting danger into his home, into his personal life and into his professional life, and he’s never known anything else. Nothing about his thirty-six years has ever been safe, except maybe the short pocket of time where he wasn’t doing bidding for the circus or for Bobbi or for an organization that didn’t know right from wrong where their assignments were concerned.

He retreats into the back office, closing the door behind him, noting the soft click of the lock. He may be lax on security cameras, but damned if his training hadn’t made him susceptible to knowing how to respond to surprise attacks – what his eyes couldn’t see, his ears could hear, and while he may not have picked up his bow for at least three years, he feels confident in the fact that those senses were a part of ingrained training that would never really go away.

Clint makes his way around the small office, stepping over old shipment boxes and a few of Kate’s discarded coffee mugs, his arms brushing aside copious piles of old newspapers and junk mail catalogues until he finds the most recent package of books. They’re not due to be sorted until tomorrow morning but he rips open the flaps anyway, rummaging through the selection until he finds at least five acceptable options ranging from biographies to comics that he hopes might win him some points.

It doesn’t even occur to him until he walks back inside that she could have left in the span of time it took him to return, and he realizes too late it probably should have. Even so, when she’s nowhere to be found, he feels his heart drop into his stomach. A quick glance around the shop reveals nothing except a punk with blue hair browsing the music section, and, _fuck_. He hasn’t heard the bell, but he knows that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have slunk out without him knowing, or found a way to leave that was more stealth than using the front door.

Clint sighs quietly, dropping the books onto one of the empty shelves, and that’s when he sees her – hunched over in the children’s section a few rows away, her dark clothing causing her to be nearly indistinguishable from the shadowy lighting and shelves of colorless hardcovers. He’s only managed to notice her by the glint of her hair, the sharp red which catches the dull overhead light as she moves her head up and down in silence.

Clint keeps his distance while mentally counting to five in his head and then moves slowly, deliberately keeping as much of a distance as possible.

“See something you like?”

She jumps erratically despite his gentle tone, despite the fact he’s kept his voice to a level that he would have, at one point in time, most likely used around hurt subjects. For the second time that day, he chooses to pretend not to notice the way her eyes dart nervously, and after a moment she straightens up, clearly trying to regain control of herself. Loose strands of hair are pressed against her cheek from what Clint thinks is sweat, before he realizes that it’s tears, that she’s been crying, or at least crying as much as she’ll allow herself to.

She looks down at the book in her hands, folding it closed slowly.

“Can I –”

“Buy it? Yeah,” Clint says with a small laugh. “That’s the point of a bookstore, right?”

She drops her gaze and puts her fingers over the cover, playing with the frayed edge of the paperback, her hand moving delicately over the gold and blue decorations before she lets her palm stop on the yellow lines of what Clint realizes are wings, and he manages to catch the block of letters underneath the drawing.

 _Russian Fairy Tales_. Clint swallows, suddenly feeling a little off and a lot uncomfortable.

“Hey, look – if you want, I can knock a few dollars off. It’s used, anyway.”

She shakes her head, and there’s a glassy, faraway look mixed into the green, one that Clint’s surprised she’s being so open about letting show.

“No,” she says finally, and her voice sounds strangled again. “No, that’s okay. I can pay.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a crumpled wad of bills, shoving them into his palm, this time not bothering to carefully count from the roll the way she had done previously. Clint takes the money and carefully smoothes it out – she’s technically two dollars and seven cents short of what he’s marked the book as, but it’s the last thing he’s going to worry about.

“All yours,” he says with another smile, and the quick, sad grin is about as much as he gets before she darts past him, shoving the book underneath her jacket, disappearing for real. He hears the light ping of the bell, and the thump of the door, and when he’s sure she’s gone he walks back towards the counter, leaning forward as he trains his gaze out the window.

“What are you running from, Natalie?” he murmurs to no one in particular, placing a hand against the dusty pane as the light from the day turns to a muted, filthy dusk.

 

***

 

According to Clint, October is a pretty shitty month.

It’s a shame, really, because September usually takes that title – kids going back to school, which means less customers during regular hours, and by default less Kate in his presence (who, as much as she gets annoying, is someone that Clint has slowly started to realize he misses when she’s not around). September is Barney’s birthday, and the anniversary of his divorce from Bobbi, and September used to be the month when he would lock himself in his apartment for at least three days while numerous bottles of vodka piled up in the trash.

For once in his life, this year, September was pretty lovely.

October, on the other hand…

October starts with his books being balanced wrong, and it seems to go downhill from there. At least two shipments are late, and Kate and America officially declare themselves a couple, a development which Clint is actually entirely happy about until Kate tells him she’s reducing her hours at the store even further. From there stems a fight that leaves Clint throwing his shoes against the wall and Kate storming out of the shop, only to return three hours later with two coffees and a pathetic mumbled apology that Clint only half accepts. Through it all, Clint tries not to focus on the fact that he hasn’t seen the redhead – _Natalie_ – for at least three months, and that the last time he saw her, she was clearly in a less than stable condition, as much as she would have never admitted it.

He manages to get his life back on track for the most part – he makes up as much as he can with Kate, he fixes his financials, and he tries to focus on keeping his store stocked. It’s the Friday before Halloween that things finally come to a crashing halt in a way that he would never expect, when he’s taking out the trash after closing up the shop, while getting drenched in two days worth of torrential downpours that Clint’s pretty sure at this point has to be the universe just deciding to shit on him.

He chucks the big black bag into the dumpster at the end of the alleyway and turns to go back inside when he hears something that makes him stop; a small scuffling sound and a soft, high-pitched cry. His first instinct is that it’s a rabid animal (and that _would_ be his luck, he thinks, some skunk or raccoon pilfering around in the rain at eleven at night), but the more he listens, the more he realizes that the noise coming from whatever’s nearby is quieter, more human than creature-like.

Clint squints in the dark, wiping water out of his eyes, and pulls his jacket up over his head as he scours the alleyway. There’s nothing he can see except for a few empty beer cans and the dumpster and some pieces of spare trash, but instinct makes turn towards the back door, and when a bright bolt of lightning conveniently illuminates the surroundings, that’s where he finds her.

She’s leaning up against the wall, her head bowed, her hands pressed against the solid block of cement. One of her boots is missing, her stockings are torn, and her jacket is ripped at the sleeve, halfway down her right arm, which she seems to be favoring with small moans as rivulets of rain drip down her front.

 _Blood, not rain_ , Clint realizes with a start as he moves closer, noticing for the first time the gaping hole in her shoulder. He swallows down a mixture of bile and fear and reaches out as she finally loses her battle with consciousness, catching her easily in his arms.

“Jesus, Natalie – fuck…Nat – what the _fuck_ happened?”

He’s spewing profanity left and right, all resolve and worry of not wanting to show concern in her presence going out the window, but at this point, he thinks they could both care less.

“Hurt,” she manages, cracking her eyes open as she grasps onto him and Clint sets his mouth in a straight line, tasting copper along with the rainwater.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he says, searching her body for other visible injuries. “Fucking muggers.”

“Not mugged…”

“Not mugged, my ass,” Clint interrupts, pressing her to his chest, feeling the warm red as it seeps through the fabric of his thin shirt. He moves as quickly as he can through the alleyway until he’s back on the street and then opens the door to the shop with one hand, ducking behind the curtain and climbing the narrow staircase to his second floor walk-up.

“I got you, okay? Just stay with me.”

He’s babbling, he knows he is, but if he’s learned anything from his past it’s that sometimes the stupidest things will help keep someone alert. And so he keeps talking as much nonsense as possible until he gets her fully inside, lowering her to the floor of the tiny bathroom, propping her up against the ceramic rim of the tub.

“Gonna get your carpet dirty,” she says weakly as he strips her of what’s left of her ruined jacket, for the moment forgetting about his own soaked clothes, and he can’t help but laugh.

“Got a cleaner coming,” he replies, brushing her hair back from her neck, noticing that it’s even shorter than last time, shaggy and cropped as if someone took a pair of scissors to the locks instead of a proper cut. He moves closer, trying to get a good visual on her injury – he knows no matter what that he has to clean it and that it definitely needs at least a handful of stitches. Beyond that, though, he realizes he has no idea how much blood she’s already lost, or for that matter, how long she was wandering around with an open wound and impaired motor skills.

“It’s clean. Gunshot through and through,” she says, licking her dry lips. “If that helps.”

“What would help is if you told me what happened,” Clint says with a frown as he gets up to rummage through the cabinet for his first aid kit. He takes out a thick selection of bandages and starts pressing them against her shoulder to stop the bleeding, and she makes a small noise of pain in response.

“Fine, then tell me if you’re hurt anywhere else,” he says as he swaps out a blood-soaked pad with trembling fingers. She shakes her head and he takes it at face value to figure that as much as she had her secrets, she wouldn’t be so dumb as to lie about something that might put her life in jeopardy.

“How bad?” she asks when she speaks again, leaning her head back against the tub, and in the overhead light he can see the thin sheen of sweat coating her face and neck.

“Bad,” Clint admits. “Might be through and through but I’ll need to stitch it. And I don’t exactly have anesthetics on hand. You need a hospital.”

She jerks forward at that, so much so that he has to push her back down. “No hospital,” she says as forcefully as she can and there’s a wild look dancing around in her pupils, an emotion Clint recognizes as fear and maybe something more primal, something that makes him stop and reconsider despite his own anxiety. He feels his shoulders sag, sighing quietly.

“If I don’t take you to the hospital, will you tell me what happened?”

She scoffs, and he can tell she’s trying to keep the pain at bay. “I don’t even know you.”

“You know me enough that when you’re bleeding out, you decide to come to my shop and hope to God that I’m there near midnight because for all you know, I don’t work late.” He pulls back and meets her eyes, challenging her. “You know me well enough to know that you can come to me and I’ll take care of you because I’ve taken some kind of goddamn liking to you. So either you know me pretty well, or you don’t have many friends that would take your injured self in off the street and I’m a last resort. Care to enlighten me on which one it is?”

She bites down on her lip and he can’t tell if the reaction is from pain or from resentment, but he lets himself feel that he’s won at least one battle against her. If he’s being honest, it hurts seeing her like this, weak and lost and probably more terrified than she’ll admit to, and he knows maybe he should be gentler given her condition but at the same time, he can’t help it. There’s a part of him that wonders if he should’ve been more forward to begin with, because maybe then he wouldn’t be here playing doctor and emergency room to a woman that he once only hoped would find him attractive enough to want to ask him to dinner.

(Then again, she hadn’t exactly been overly pushy either, so it’s very well that they still could’ve ended up here, he decides as he takes off another pad, his anxiety leveling out at finally seeing the bleeding slow.)

“Where were you when you got shot?” he tries again as he reaches for antiseptic to clean the wound. She visibly reacts when the alcohol meets her skin but bites back her unshed tears, finding her voice after far too long.

“Flatbush Avenue,” she manages. “The park by the library.”

“Prospect Park. That’s a decent ways,” Clint says slowly, watching as more red comes off on his hands. “You made it here by yourself?”

She nods, cracking a slight smile. “Pain is relative when you’re looking to survive,” she says with a surprising amount of vigor. “You run or you die. You don’t exactly get an option to think about it.”

“And you ran here,” Clint finishes. “From what?”

“From who,” she corrects so softly he can barely hear her. He uses the opportunity to finish cleaning the wound before getting up and pouring a glass of water, which he shoves unceremoniously into her hands.

“From who,” he repeats gently, running a needle under hot water and holding it up in front of her face, a silent request for approval. She nods as she drains the glass and then turns her head to the side, closing her eyes. Clint keeps himself focused on her breathing as he starts to sew the wound shut in small, tight knots, suddenly thankful that all of the medical training he had been put through at S.H.I.E.L.D. – not to mention watching other people stitch him up enough – hadn’t entirely been for nothing.

“People want to kill me,” she says softly, and there’s a hitch in her voice that allows him to realize she might actually be telling the truth. “Bad people. I used to be bad, once. I did bad things. Then I got smart. I got tired. So I tried to correct, you know? Make things right.” She swallows hard. “I got red in my ledger. I need to wipe it out.”

“Seems like a dangerous way to play martyr,” Clint says slowly, watching the way she flinches slightly each time he digs the needle into her flesh. He can’t imagine not having control of the pain – the worst of his wounds have all been medically assisted – but he suddenly thinks that this might not be anything more terrible than what she’s apparently used to handling.

She laughs, the movement causing her body to shift without warning, and Clint cries out sharply before he steadies her again.

“Sorry,” she apologizes weakly. “It’s just…you think I have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice,” Clint says a little hotly, thinking of his own life, how it was his choice to leave the circus, to leave S.H.I.E.L.D., to divorce Bobbi and to take Kate on as his co-worker even though she had no professional experience other than babysitting…and, well, maybe they all hadn’t been the best choices, but they had been his own, even if other people had disagreed or tried to steer him otherwise. She shakes her head slowly.

“I don’t think you understand,” she continues, and Clint blows out a breath in frustration.

“Then _make me_ understand,” he bites, because suddenly the entire night is starting to grate on his nerves. “Either trust me, or don’t, and it doesn’t matter either way at this point because you’re already here. But for the record, you can’t expect to come here bleeding all over my bathroom and then trust me enough to stitch you up, but _not_ trust me enough to tell me what the fuck this is all about.”

It amazes him, how small she seems, curled up on his bathroom floor, shaking and wounded and possibly sick and yet still so full of life, so dead-set on _not_ being vulnerable that he’s pretty sure she could probably best him in a fight if she had to. She opens her eyes, shooting daggers in his direction without turning her head, and to be honest, he thinks the whole display is pretty effective.

“I was part of a program,” she says quietly, and as she talks, everything about her suddenly seems tired and worn, as if she’s a toy winding down from too much movement. “The Red Room. It was an orphanage in Russia that wasn’t as much of an orphanage as it was a place where girls were sold and trained and...and made.”

“Made,” Clint tries out the words, and they taste dark and bitter on his tongue.

“Yeah,” she says. “Made. After a few years of training, they sent me here – to America – to clean up some of their messes, to do their bidding. Easier to send the girls than the soldiers because no one suspects us and we’re harder to find. I spent a few years doing whatever I was told to do, taking whatever orders I got, and in return I was given a place to sleep and food to eat.” She stops, wincing at the pain of the needle. “And then, one day…I don’t know what happened, but one day I just woke up and I remembered bits and pieces of myself. Things that weren’t there before but that were coming back, floating around in my brain like particles or cells trying to find a resting place only…only nothing fit. I couldn’t understand.”

“You came into my shop that day,” he says slowly as the thought dawns on him, finishing the last stitch. “That day that you wanted to learn about Russian history. That was you trying to…trying to find stuff out?”

She nods, and he notices that her face is paler than it was a few minutes ago. “I took the wrong direction on the subway by accident and ended up at the end of the line. This was the first thing I saw when I started to walk…figured a bookstore was as good a place as any to start remembering.”

“And the children’s book?” Clint asks, remembering the manner of her return, the jumpiness and the rattled look and the paperback with the block lettering. “That was…the same thing?”

She shakes her head slowly. “That was memories,” she says quietly, shuddering a little bit. “Just memories.”

She falls silent again as he wipes the area around the stitching again before securing a bandage on top of the wound, sitting back on his heels as he cleans up the floor.

“Come on,” he says tiredly when he’s finished, putting one hand underneath her shoulder and lifting her up again. He carries her to the bedroom and lowers her to the covers gently, before turning to rummage through his dresser, figuring this is probably the only moment he’ll be thankful that he’s kept a few of Bobbi’s clothes stuffed in the back of his drawer because of his own dumb inability to part with a relationship that he should’ve let die years ago. She’s still shaking when he turns back, her hands gripping the sheets, and glares when he offers out a light blue tee shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants.

“I don’t want you sleeping in wet clothes,” he says firmly, ignoring her look. “Not when you’re already weak.”

She eyes him critically but doesn’t answer, instead putting her legs out as if giving him permission to continue. He removes her pants as easily as he can before re-dressing her, being careful to keep his eyes away from her lower body, concentrating on her shoulder instead.

“You’re too careful,” she says through slightly irregular breathing as he reaches for her top, lifting it over her head while trying to keep her arm from moving too sharply, and he can tell through her deflection that she’s serious but he decides not to push it.

“Yeah, well. You made it this far, so I’d like to make sure you don’t die on me before I get to cook you breakfast.”

There’s a ghost of a smile that flits over her lips as he slips the slightly too-big shirt over her head, helping her move so she can lie on the bed more comfortably. Pulling the comforter down and over her body, he lets himself linger long enough to make sure she’s not going to be in any immediate danger, then gets up to grab some clothes for himself.

Clint changes quickly, leaving his garments in a heap by his closet, before coming back to the bed, relieved to find she’s finally (mostly) passed out. He turns her onto her side so that she can take pressure off her injured shoulder, pulling the covers and an extra blanket around her body, brushing hair from her still-sweaty forehead, and in the splay of the shadows he can see the bruises on her neck, the ones that trail down her side and pepper the length of her spine.

He stays that way for awhile, one hand placed on her back so that he can monitor her breathing, until dawn starts to break through the quiet night.

 

***

 

Clint doesn’t remember falling asleep and as a result, he’s only marginally disoriented when he wakes, almost falling off the edge of the bed and confused as to why he’s regulated himself to the far end of the king sized mattress. Reaching out groggily, he feels his way across the covers, groping for sheets and blankets, realizing that the space next to him is still warm, as if someone else was sleeping there, as if it’s Bobbi all over again. Except that can’t be right, he knows, because it’s not Bobbi, it hasn’t been Bobbi for years…

His mind snaps into alertness and he sits up fully, taking stock of the room. Nothing looks out of place or terribly trashed, but the space next to him is most definitely empty, and his trained ears can’t hear a damned thing except for the constant dripping of the sink from the leaky bathroom pipe that he hasn’t had a chance to fix yet.

Clint groans to himself, swinging his legs forward, stumbling into the bathroom to splash water on his face. It’s later than it should be, he needs to open up the store, he’s most certainly overslept _and_ there’s still a fair amount of her blood soaking into the carpet, which at least tells him that the previous night wasn’t as much of a dream as he had thought. For some reason, the realization gives him a small sliver of comfort; in as much as the situation of _dream girl shows up bleeding profusely and her admirer is forced to take care of her while she airs her dirty laundry_ can be comforting _._

If Kate heard about this, she’d never let him hear the end of it.

His first thought as he runs a towel over his face is that finding her gone would leave him more worried than annoyed. He’s far from the world’s most expert doctor, but he’s doubtful she could make it far with her shoulder still healing, and figures she requires at least another two days of bed rest – not to mention a good round of antibiotics – to get her out of the danger zone. He throws the towel into the hamper with slightly too much force as he frowns into the mirror, noting the lines on his face and the stubble that’s starting to grow prominent on his chin. Hell, maybe the whole thing really had been a dream. After all, he’s well aware that his luck doesn’t necessarily extend to this kind of thing.

Which is why Clint is absolutely dumbfounded when he enters the living room and finds his houseguest sitting on the edge of the couch, a spread of open folders before her, clearly engrossed in whatever she’s reading. He stands rooted to the ground, his skin crawling when he realizes what she’s looking at.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

She looks up at his voice, barely flinching at the tone, and cocks her head slightly. “Morning reading.”

“Morning snooping is more like it,” Clint says, crossing the room in two quick strides, snatching what he can out of her view. “And how the fuck are you out of bed? You should be sleeping.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says defensively, though the way she winces makes it clear she’s still in a sort of pain that she won’t admit. “And I didn’t want to wake you. I was trying to be respectful.”

“By going through my stuff?” Clint asks, his voice rising against his will. She shrugs with her good shoulder.

“I thought I should know the guy who was saving my life. Who apparently used to be a part of one of the most prominent law enforcement agencies in the world and neglected to tell me as much.” She moves out of his range as he reaches for her again, surprisingly agile for someone with a decently fresh gunshot wound, and tosses a file in his direction.

“Clint Francis Barton, codename: Hawkeye. That was you?”

“Give that to me,” he growls, grabbing it before she can take it back, and he feels her eyes follow him as he turns away.

“That was you?” she asks again and as he seethes silently, he remembers what he had told her last night about trust, about letting someone do something like patch you up and admitting the circumstances behind it in return. He feels the air leave his body, the fight bleeding out of him not unlike the way he had watched her shoulder bleed onto his own body, and he sinks down on the couch, rubbing a hand over his eye.

“It _was_ me,” he says quietly. “It hasn’t been me for a long time.”

“Why?” She asks, her voice more curious than accusatory as she curls her neck sideways, still keeping her distance. Clint laughs a little, feeling the sound go right through him.

“Because I had a choice, and I made it. I decided to get out, to try to make my ends meet in a way that didn’t involve me trotting all over the globe to make some higher ups with expensive suits happy. S.H.I.E.L.D.…whatever it was that brought me there in the first place, it lost that luster. And when I realized that, I got out before I could get hurt further.” He kicks at the space between the air and the coffee table, and she keeps her silence.

“But you miss it.”

“I don’t,” Clint retorts, straightening up and heading into the kitchen. “I haven’t touched my bow in three years, but I’m happy selling books and living under the radar and my door doesn’t get knocked down anymore with people who want to hurt me, and I don’t have to carry a goddamn burner phone. So, no. I don’t miss it. Nothing good came out of it, anyway,” he continues, thinking of Bobbi. “Just a lot of grief and a lot of injuries and a lot of scolding when I didn’t do something to the best of my ability. I wasn’t exactly a model student as far as they were concerned.”

Clint punctuates his sentence by pulling the lever down on the Keurig, sticking a blue mug with a chipped handle underneath the spout as he waits for the machine to growl to life. He hasn’t even realized she’s followed him until she clears her throat, starting to speak slowly, her voice tentative, as if she’s trying to decide whether what she’s going to say is something she should even share in his presence.

“A man was sent to kill me once,” she says slowly, her voice becoming progressively closer as she inches towards him. “In St. Petersburg.” She stops and takes a breath before continuing.

“A man with a bow.”

Clint feels his blood go cold, the whir of the coffee machine becoming a dull roar as her words settle over him, rendering him useless in both speech and motion. He vaguely registers her hand on top of his, her voice saying something that resembles his name, and when he recovers, he realizes that his hands are shaking.

“Clint.”

“You.” He blinks her into focus, trying to make the words in his brain come out of his mouth. “You were the Black Widow?”

Her silence seems to indicate her response more clearly than her verbal answer ever could, and he suddenly feels like someone has punched him repeatedly in the stomach.

“They didn’t tell me who I was tracking,” he says when he finds his voice again, and it sounds like his words are scraping themselves over sandpaper, like he hasn’t talked in years. “Your history. Any of that stuff. They just called you a target.” He shakes his head, sinking into the kitchen chair. “Fuck, you couldn’t have been more than fifteen.”

“I was thirteen,” she says quietly, switching out his cup and placing another one underneath. “Or at least, I think I was. You don’t exactly get a coming of age in the Red Room that doesn’t involve a knife and a kill switch.”

“Christ,” Clint mutters, watching the coffee sputter noisily into the purple University of Iowa mug. “What are the odds?”

“That the girl who you were sent to kill over ten years ago survives, shows up in your disgusting section of Brooklyn, not to mention your own store purely by chance, and then ends up in your bed?” She smiles thinly, picking up both mugs and bringing them to the table. “Pretty damn slim, I’d say.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly, grabbing his coffee as she sits across from him. He puts his head in his hands, his brain struggling to process the entirety of the past eighteen or so hours, the sheer magnitude of the bomb she’s seemingly dropped on him, not to mention the fact that the girl he had spent most of the summer thinking about was now sitting in his apartment, watching him drink coffee bare-chested in dirty boxers and mismatched socks.

“I have a confession,” she says after a long silence, and when he raises his head to meet her eyes, she offers a small, sad smile. “My name’s not really Natalie.”

“No shit,” Clint replies warily. “So you wanna tell me what I should call you?”

She hesitates as if trying to decide whether or not she should share this part of her life with him, and for the first time he wonders if it’s not so much her own doing, but rather, the conditioning of not allowing herself to give up more than she needs to if she doesn’t have to.

“Natasha,” she says when she speaks again, and her voice is soft.

He’s not quite sure what he’s expected, even with the knowledge of the fact that the name she had given him months ago wasn’t entirely real. He hadn’t seen her as something mainstream like Laura or Stephanie, or something cutesy like Meggie or Sam, but it didn’t matter, because Natasha was none of those things. Natasha was demure and a little different, feminine but not at the same time, slightly dangerous and a little rough around the edges. Natasha was…nice.

And so Clint says “that’s nice,” and Natasha – _Natasha_ – replies, “I guess,” and they sip their coffee in silence as the rain starts up again, drumming against the windows and sending sheets of water down the glass pane.

 

***

 

After he finishes his coffee, Clint hurries downstairs to open up the shop, unpack the shipments, and then makes a beeline for the nearest Duane Reade while speed dialing Kate’s cell phone, all the while praying for the reprieve in the storm to hold out.

“I need you to come in and take over the store for me today,” Clint says as soon as he hears her groggy moan, not waiting for an answer. “No questions. I’ll pay you overtime.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kate spits out, coming alert at his words. “I just woke up and I told America I’d take her to the mall.”

“You can bring her to the shop and have her help out, I’ll pay you _both_ double, and in the future, you can take as many days off as you want,” Clint says desperately as he crosses the street, dodging in and out of traffic. “Just, please, do this one thing for me. I’m begging you.”

“You never beg,” Kate grumbles, before heaving a sigh into the phone, and Clint can almost see her exasperated face.

“Katherine.”

“Barton,” she spits out, before sighing again. “Fine. But I’m holding you to that promise. And if I sell anything, I want double the commission.”

“Deal,” Clint says hurriedly, shoving the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he yanks open the door to the drug store, Kate’s singsong voice filling the space of his eardrum.

“You better not back out, Hawkeye. I know where you keep your bow.”

 

***

 

Clint feels slightly more in control when he returns to the apartment, with the knowledge of the fact that he’s left the shop in Kate’s somewhat capable hands for the time being, and when he opens the door he finds Natasha standing in the middle of the living room, scouring the shelves of the wall unit above the TV.

“You know, for a guy who owns a bookstore, you don’t have a lot of reading material,” she notes, picking up a thick paperback and thumbing through it.

“Jesus, is there anything you _don’t_ snoop into?” Clint asks a little irritably, putting the bag on the floor. “And for the record, I do have a lot of books. I keep a stock in my office so I don’t clutter up my apartment.”

“Sure,” she says agreeably, tucking the book underneath her arm and sitting down on the couch, eyeing the bag. “Do you come bearing gifts?”

Clint decides to ignore the subject change, and the way she’s placed the book on her lap as if she’s decided she’s going to keep it for whatever reason. “I come bearing gifts in the form of pain medication, if that’s what you mean,” he answers, taking the materials out of the brown paper sack and handing them over. “And water, and juice, and food, though I can’t promise it’s any better than my own cooking.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she groans as she reaches for the pills and then a bottle of water. “Don’t suppose you have any tequila to wash this down with, do you?”

“Unfortunately for you, I’ve been sober since I was twenty-five,” Clint admits, joining her on the couch. “Sometimes wish I wasn’t though.”

She considers his response for a moment and then nods thoughtfully, as if reflecting on his words. “Yeah, I can see that.”

He’s not quite sure what she means by her comment but doesn’t ask, instead leaning back and taking note of the way that most of her hair has been pulled into a loose bun, giving him clear access to the small tattoo behind her ear, the one he noticed on her first visit. Now that the entire design is visible, he can see how the dark line he mistook for a possible letter is actually part of a circle, inked on the curve of her scalp, and there’s a small snakehead at one end biting its tail to close the loop.

“What’s the story behind that?” he asks, indicating at the back of her head. Natasha frowns.

“Who said there was a story?”

Clint blinks fast. “No one,” he replies. “Except for the fact that I come from the circus and I saw my fair share of tattoos, and you didn’t bother to get one unless you had some sort of impulse or idea.”

She chews on her lip before turning to face him, her eyes bright. “The snake eating its tail,” she says slowly. “It’s a symbol for life and death. I’ve been on both sides of the coin, so I thought…well, I thought why not get something to remind me that someday, it might not really matter?” She shrugs, reaching up to touch the back of her ear, as if reflecting on a previously forgotten memory. “Plus, all my scars were given to me against my will. I wanted one that was my own doing.”

Clint watches the way she seemingly draws into herself as she speaks, and smiles. “I like it,” he decides after a moment, and when she returns the sentiment, he thinks he might actually be well on his way to getting something genuine – though he feels that he still has a ways to go in terms of fully earning her trust, and that the reason he’s barely scraping by is because he’s in control of her healing.

“You should get a tattoo,” she says suddenly, out of nowhere, and he startles, surprised.

“Me?”

“Yeah.” She nudges his shoulder. “I think you’d look cute.”

“Cute isn’t exactly what I’d be going for,” Clint gripes, pulling his legs up to his chest as Natasha regards him carefully.

“But you _have_ thought about it.”

“Sure,” Clint says agreeably. “Like I said – grew up in the circus. Besides, every kid goes through that phase where they think about what they’d permanently want to ink on their bodies if they ever got the chance.”

“Not everyone,” Natasha corrects darkly, and for a moment he wonders if he’s said something wrong but she continues before he can try to apologize for his thoughtless blunder.

“So what was it?”

Clint thinks for a second and then puts his legs back on the ground, shifting and reaching for a discarded napkin. Grabbing a pen from the coffee table, he bends over to draw slowly, and when he’s done, he shoves it at her face.

“It’s a –”

“Single feather, yeah,” Clint says, looking forlorn. “I was never one for creativity. But I always figured I’d get it like this, with the edges coming off and turning into tiny birds, see?” He points to where he’s shaded some of the napkin darker, a stark contrast from the white. “There was an old fable in the circus that we learned, where according to Native Americans, feathers represented courage and strength. Always wish I had more of one or the other, so, you know…it would have been a nice reminder.”

Natasha nods, letting her eyes rove over the design. “I like it,” she echoes after a moment as he takes the napkin back, shoving it in his pocket, suddenly feeling a little vulnerable.

“Hey, so, uh…” Clint trails off, wondering if the shift in their conversation is any indication of her comfort level, and figures it can’t hurt to ask. “What you said last night, about your ledger. Is that why you got shot?”

For a moment, he thinks she’ll refuse to answer again and he watches the way her face goes through about ten different emotions in the span of five seconds, all of which he manages to pick up on without her ever changing her expression. When she finally does speak, her voice so soft that he almost has to lean forward to hear.

“There was a girl that I had put a hit on, before I…before all of this happened, with my memory.” She laces her fingers together, as if its an attempt to keep herself steady. “Her family had been part of some underground drug ring and I was sent to wipe her out. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have anything to do with it, that she was just a child born into the wrong place at the wrong time. She carried their name, so they wanted her dead.”

Clint leans back as her voice grows a little stronger, her words becoming clearer.

“I wanted to find her and warn her, or get her out at least before they had a chance to attack. But they found me before I could even get there. Somehow they knew what was happening with my…they called it ‘conditioning,’ I think. Whatever it was, they knew that I was broken. And everyone knows that no one needs broken girls.” She digs her fingers harder into the cushion, her knuckles turning white. “I wasn’t quick enough, for once in my life. I was caught off guard when I was leaving the place where I was hiding out. Got attacked before I could even make it inside.”

Clint frowns as she stops talking, his mind working to comprehend the weight behind her words.

“That’s what you’re doing, then. A suicide mission.”

“A redemption mission,” she corrects. “I’m crossing people off my ledger. Anyway, it’s not suicide if you’re already considered dead.”

“Huh.” Clint makes a small noise, trying to let himself understand everything she’s just admitted. “So how do I fit into this?”

Natasha shakes her head. “You don’t,” she says shortly. “You saved me, twice now, and at least one of those times, you could’ve killed me.” She pauses. “I owe you a debt.”

Clint looks down at that, feeling his cheeks grow hot, and bites his lip. “Nah,” he says a little embarrassedly. “I’m not a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent anymore, Natasha. I don’t need to be owed anything more than a cup of coffee.”

“I owe you,” she repeats more strongly, and there’s something almost defensive in her tone. He watches the way her mouth slides into a thin line, and realizes that she’s more serious about the words than she’s probably been about anything in the entire short time that they’ve known each other.

“Alright, you owe me,” he relents finally. “But you don’t have to call it in anytime soon. Or ever, okay?”

She looks at him as if she doesn’t quite understand what he’s saying, and Clint sighs to himself.

“Eat,” he says finally, gesturing to the bag of chips and small cartons of fruit. “And drink. You need to stay hydrated.”

“And you have a store to run,” she counters as she reaches for a small bottle of orange juice. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned about that than my well-being?”

“Kate’s taking care of things for me right now,” he replies, before realizing she doesn’t know who Kate even _is_. “My co-worker. Shouldn’t be too bad today anyway, what with the weather and all.”

Natasha gives him a look and he can’t tell if it’s grounded in contempt or loathing or both. “Is this how you treat all your wounded guests? Skipping out on work so you can take care of them privately?”

Clint shakes his head. “Only the ones who show up bleeding on my doorstep with sordid pasts that involve me almost killing them,” he replies lightly, getting to his feet. “Now eat.”

She glares again but obeys, fingers picking pieces of fruit from the oversized carton, and he watches from the kitchen when he thinks she’s not looking.

 

***

 

“So who else knows about your secret identity?” she asks later when they’ve both made it through the day and he’s lying on the bed next to her, keeping a respectable distance. She doesn’t say the words out loud, that she’s scared of being conscious and alone, but he manages to pick up on the fact when she more or less hedges about going to sleep before he offers to share the bed with her.

“Just Kate,” he says, staring up at the ceiling. Natasha raises an eyebrow in the dark.

“By accident? Or did you actually tell her who you were?”

Clint shrugs. “Both, kind of. She came to work with me when I was still…when I was still trying to really get out of the whole thing. Got a letter to my store one day from the guy who used to be my boss asking me to reconsider my decision, and, well, it doesn’t take an idiot to put two and two together.” He lets out a breath. “I was honest with her after that, because I needed help and I knew I couldn’t trust her if she didn’t trust me.”

“Trust is important to you,” she notes with a curious edge to her voice, and he props himself up on one elbow.

“Old habits. I came from a place where if you didn’t know how to trust, it had the potential to cost you your life.” Clint pauses, eyeing her. “Didn’t you?”

She doesn’t answer at first, and when she does, her voice sounds small. “I guess,” she replies, and when she asks her next question, she speaks so quietly that he almost misses it.

“Would you ever return?”

It’s an inquiry so unexpected that his first instinct is to bolt, his second is to snap, and in the fear of having a reaction that would potentially drive her away, he chooses not to respond at all, instead shaking his head. She turns to look at him, exasperation shading her features.

“What was _so_ bad about it that you had to quit, that you wouldn’t even consider starting over, maybe this time with your own agenda instead of someone else’s?” she asks in frustration. “You assumed I had a choice in my life because you’ve always had the ability to make your own. So why are you so quick to dismiss this one?”

He opens his mouth and closes it just as quickly, still feeling caught off guard. “It’s…complicated.”

“Doesn’t seem complicated,” she responds. “Either there’s something personal that you don’t want to tell me about, or you really hated what you were doing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be so hesitant to give me an answer.”

Clint sighs heavily; feeling overly trapped in his emotions, and closes his eyes while he leans back against the headboard. “I loved it,” he says, not bothering to hide the crack in his voice, figuring at this point it doesn’t pay to hide anymore. “I loved the release of a bow-string. I loved the feeling of holding my weapon, I loved the feeling of being good at something that I could control, that I earned.” He opens his eyes and looks down at his hands, the skin that’s smoother than it has been in years, the rough and coarse edges that were always a staple when he was regularly in the field flattening over, almost non-existent.

“So why not go back?” she asks again, this time more softly, and he purses his lips.

“I think…” He pauses, thinking of Bobbi. “I think I would need to have a purpose. Something that would give me a reason, rather than just doing it because I thought I had to prove myself as someone who could do good. If that makes sense.”

He expects her to keep pushing him considering the fact that he knows his response isn’t much of a response at all, but surprisingly, she doesn’t, and instead settles into his side before he realizes what she’s doing.

“That’s fair,” she says quietly, and as Clint watches her scoot against him, he notes how there are parts of her body that are still tense, as if she’s afraid to let herself unwind even though she’s not entirely alone.

“You gonna be okay?” he asks as he looks down at her, concern seeping into his tone as he stares at her wound. “To sleep, that is?”

Natasha nods. “Yeah,” she says, pausing for a long time before she speaks again. “I mean, if you stay.”

“It’s my bed,” Clint says with a small smile, and as he closes his eyes again, feeling her breathing even out, he wonders how long she’s been alone that it means something of comfort for her to have someone – even if it’s someone she barely knows – by her side when she’s the most vulnerable.

 

***

 

For the second time in 48 hours, Clint wakes disoriented, though this time he finds himself spread out over the length of the bed, clutching a pillow in his right hand. He turns groggily, reaching for his watch on the bedside table and squinting at the small numbers.

Ten past eight. Not exactly late, but not exactly on time, either.

Clint groans, rubbing a hand across his jaw as he sits up. The silence is palpable, but, he remembers, not entirely indicative of the anxiety he feels creeping up inside him. Still, there’s something that he can’t put his finger on, something that feels slightly off, and when he makes his way out of the bedroom, he finally understands why.

The kitchen is tidied impeccably, the bag of take out they had both devoured the night before from the Chinese restaurant down the street neatly placed in the trash, the coffee mugs cleaned and the couch pillows straightened. Clint sighs, sinking down onto the floor.

He notices that the bottle of pills is also gone, and finds himself thinking that at least if she ran off, she was smart enough to take precautions. The book that she had been looking at – a collection of sonnets by William Shakespeare – is sitting in its place and he picks it up with a wry smile as he catches sight of the time on his watch again.

Eight twenty-five. Kate was most _certainly_ going to kill him. He drags himself up and into the bathroom, gets dressed, and tries not to think about how they had fallen asleep pressed against each other, how if he looks closely he can still see the faint outline of her bloodstains on the tiles of his floor, and the and how there’s a very real chance that he might never see Natasha again.

 

***

 

Six months pass, in the curiously quick way that time passes when things get busy and life moves forward.

America takes a surprising likeness to the store, so Kate convinces Clint to let her help out a few afternoons a week, and having two people around is more valuable than he would ever admit to. It gives him more time to balance the books and more time to focus on keeping the shop in order, and in compensation, Clint gives them both more days off on a regular basis.

He thinks of Natasha when there’s downtime, wonders what she’s doing and where she is and if she’s managed to escape her enemies after all. For all he knew, she was probably in Jakarta or some random country he’d never heard of, doing more of what she had so blatantly referred to as “wiping out her ledger.” Or maybe she had decided to abandon her cause entirely and was taking some long vacation around the world – that wouldn’t surprise him, either. Whatever the case, Clint figures that he’s never hearing from or seeing her again, and attempts to make peace with that thought every time he finds himself getting distracted.

The letter comes on a day when both Kate and America have left early, Clint having sent them off on a well-deserved premature weekend after a decently long five days. He works through lunch and almost forgets to check the small mail slot, idly flipping through a host of bills and junk mail until he gets to a thin, white envelope, unmarked except for his name and the store address on the outside.

Clint drops the rest of the mail, turning the letter over in his hands before sticking his finger under the flap and tearing it open carefully, pulling out the contents. Instead of a piece of paper or even a newspaper cut out that might account for the slim sizing, there’s a folded array of thin pages that Clint realizes, the closer he looks, are lines of words.

He walks back behind his desk, leaving the remainder of the day’s letters in a pile on the floor, and spreads the pages out on the counter. There are eight seemingly random torn out sheets and when Clint studies them more closely, he recognizes what they are – sonnets, presumably ones removed from the book Natasha had left in his apartment.

“Son of a bitch,” Clint mutters to himself, grabbing a pen and reading the pieces over and over, moving the papers around and trying to understand what the hell she’s sent. It’s most definitely some sort of code, he knows enough to recognize that from his S.H.I.E.L.D. days, from the ingrained sense of learning how to pick up patterns and pick out intricacies in what, to other people, might look like nothing. But the randomness of the whole thing makes his head spin and with no other information to go off of, he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to get out of a bunch of poems with seemingly no correlation.

Clint throws down his pen, sitting back on the stool. There was no way that Natasha wouldn’t send him a message and not expect it to be something that he couldn’t figure out. Or maybe that’s the point, Clint thinks in frustration. Maybe she didn’t expect him to figure anything out. After all, it had been long enough that he most certainly could believe she didn’t need his help anymore.

He taps his feet restlessly against the floor, staring down at the papers, before leaning forward again on his palms. It’s then that he notices it the small, barely visible and faded dash in the upper corner of the top page, one that looks like it was made by the mark of a pencil.

He pushes the paper aside and scans the next one for something similar, his eyes finding another series of faded dashes, this time three in a row. Something clicks inside his brain and he starts rearranging again, until the eight dashes are all lined up in numerical order. Clint grabs a discarded receipt from the trash, scribbling the number of the sonnet on each page in correspondence with the order in which he’s organized them in, and when he’s done, he can’t help but smile.

_8-18-4-7-5-6-29-1._

He practically lunges for the cordless phone, not bothering to care about the fact that he knows he’s technically still open and that customers can walk in any moment, dialing with baited breath, his heart pounding against his ribcage as the phone rings and rings and rings. After about the ninth chime, he’s pretty sure that he’s made a mistake, and tries not to let his disappointment take over as his stomach drops.

 _Too good to be true, anyway_ , he thinks sourly as he prepares to disconnect.

“Took you long enough.”

She answers on what he thinks might be the eleventh or twelfth ring and in that moment, he realizes he’s had no idea of just how much he’s missed her.

“Apparently your mail took the slow boat,” Clint responds, hiding the emotion from his voice. He hears her laugh and it’s light, he realizes, light and lilting and… _different_. As if she’s less stressed, happier, the way a normal person with normal worries should sound.

“Sorry for the secrecy,” she apologizes, and he can hear her moving around on the other end of the phone. “I still don’t exactly trust regular methods of communication – this is an untraceable line, by the way, and this phone will probably be destroyed afterwards, just because – but I see you figured it out okay.”

“Yeah, well.” Clint snorts. “Next time, maybe think about the consequences of defacing one of my books for your own personal needs. I gotta replace that, you know.”

“I’ll buy you another one,” Natasha responds before pausing, and it doesn’t take him long to pick up on her suddenly hesitant tone. “Look, Clint…I didn’t have you call so I could apologize for ruining your book.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that,” he replies, moving forward to flip the “closed” sign onto the door. “So why did you have me call, then?”

Natasha takes a breath. “I want you to come back to S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she says in a rush, the words seemingly melding together all at once, and he almost drops the phone in response.

“You want me to what?” he asks when he recovers, and he hears her sigh into the receiver.

“I want you to come back to S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she repeats, this time more strongly. Clint barks out a laugh, unable to help himself.

“We already talked about this, in case you don’t remember,” he says unapologetically. “And I told you. It’s not going to happen. Not without some really good reason.”

“Well.” Natasha swallows again, and he gets the sense that she either really wants to tell him something or is somewhat afraid of what his reaction will be to whatever she’s going to say.

“Natasha,” he says when she doesn’t continue, squeezing his eyes shut against the tension headache he feels coming on.

“What if I’m the reason?”

For the second time in less than five minutes, Clint almost drops the phone, feeling his legs give out underneath him and barely making it back to the counter in time to collapse onto the stool. “You – _what_?”

“I might have joined up with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she admits slowly. “As a junior agent. It’s kind of a long story.”

“No shit it’s kind of a long story,” Clint retorts. “You wanna explain it to me?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, and suddenly she doesn’t sound so meek anymore. “After I left your apartment that day, I decided to head to DC – I didn’t want to stay in New York knowing I still had a target painted on the back of my head, and our conversation got me thinking. I wanted to change my life for the better, so why spend time doing it myself when I could get help? Anyway, I looked up S.H.I.E.L.D.’s headquarters, more or less turned myself in to your old boss. Nick –”

“Fury, yeah,” Clint breaks in and he can almost see Natasha nod.

“Right. Well, he – Fury – I think he was more than a little shocked that the person he had put a hit out on years ago was showing up in his office asking for a job, but we made a deal that involved me helping them find the people that did stuff to me, if I helped them with some assignments where they could use my skills. In return, they’d let me use them for resources so I could try to figure out my past…or, you know, what’s left of it.”

Clint rocks back and forth on the stool, feeling like everything is spinning off its axis, feeling like he’s twenty-two and piss-ass drunk all over again from another bender that he doesn’t remember taking on. “Natasha –”

“Clint. I didn’t have you call so I could give you my sob story,” she says, this time a little impatiently. “I called to tell you that this it a thing that I’m doing, and it would benefit you to think about doing the same. I could use some help. Fury would be glad to see you again, you wouldn’t even have to re-train unless you wanted to.”

“I…Natasha, I…” Clint trails off, unsure of what to say. Part of him wants to say yes, to say hell with it right now and grab his bow and never look back. And yet there’s also a part of him that he knows is more terrified than he would let on at the prospect of jumping back into a part of his life that he had avoided for so long, that he had pretended didn’t exist.

“You don’t have to make a decision today,” Natasha says, interrupting his thoughts. “I just wanted to let you know. And tell you where I was. But I’m going to call you back from an unrestricted number in ten days, and at that point, you’re going to have to tell me yes or no.” She pauses. “I won’t be upset either way with what you choose, Clint. It’s your decision. But remember what you told me about decisions.”

She clicks off the line before he has a chance to respond and Clint’s left with the whine of the dial tone, his mind still reeling and his legs still shaky as hell.

 

***

 

“Woah, woah, woah. Woah. _WOAH_.”

Kate’s perched on the edge of the couch in Clint’s apartment, her coffee cold and her eyes wide as Clint finishes telling her most of everything he’s kept silent in the past few months. “You saved her? Like, a knight in shining armor thing? And then you guys slept together?”

“We didn’t sleep together,” Clint responds defensively, and for once, he at least feels like he can say that while knowing it’s the actual truth. “We slept in the same bed, and I took care of her.”

“And then you told her about your past and she went ahead and used you to motivate herself into making better decisions? _And_ now she wants you to come back to your old job and work with her?” Kate’s eyes look like they’re going to fall out of her head, and Clint thinks he would find the whole thing funny if he weren’t feeling so conflicted and anxious.

“Something like that, yeah.” He takes a seat on the couch. “So how stupid would it be to say yes?”

“Honestly?” Kate grins, putting her cup on the floor. “Pretty fucking stupid. I mean, who would want to return to the coolest job in the world with the girl of their dreams? Stuff like that _never_ happens in real life.”

“Funny,” Clint shoots back, his eyes dark as he presses his fists into the cushion. “Very funny.”

Kate rolls her eyes as she more or less hops off the armrest, shoving her purple hair into a ponytail.

“Clint.”

She’s standing above him with her arms crossed and when he meets her gaze, he sees for perhaps the first time something serious, something that’s not a childish joke or an immature response. It compels him not to look away, despite the fact he feels like he wants to.

“Clint, I’m going to tell you what America told me when I admitted that I was starting to have feelings for her.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” he asks moodily, watching as Kate breaks into a grin again.

“If you pass this up, I’ll never fucking forgive you.”

 

***

 

Ten days later, at noon on the dot, an unrestricted number pops up on his office phone and Clint picks it up on the first ring.

“I’m in,” he says before he can talk himself out of the decision he feels he’s been second-guessing for the past week and a half, and he can practically hear Natasha smile over the phone.

“Good. I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Yeah?” He allows himself let out the breath he’s unconsciously been holding, suddenly feeling a little lighter. “So what would you have done if I said no?”

“Oh.” Natasha sounds unconcerned. “Probably put you in one of my signature thigh chokeholds until you relented. In case you weren’t aware, I wasn’t really going to take no for an answer.”

Clint leans forward, almost collapsing onto the counter. “Well, I’m glad I avoided that one.”

“You should be,” says Natasha, and there’s a tone in her voice that he can tell means she’s teasing and also not at the same time. Clint smiles to himself because despite it all, despite the fact that he’s still not sure if taking this leap of faith is the right thing or not; just hearing her voice over the phone and knowing he’s going to see her again in some capacity sooner rather than later makes him happier than he can express.

“So what now?” he asks, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. “Do I have to go through some super-secret spy obstacle course to find out where you’re hiding?”

Natasha laughs, and Clint realizes he likes the sound more than he thought.

“Well, conveniently, Fury’s decided to send us on vacation for a few days. Said he wanted to give us time to talk everything over by ourselves, away from here. We can go pretty much anywhere, and S.H.I.E.L.D. can pick you up whenever it’s convenient.”

“Huh.” Clint leans his elbows on the counter, mulling over the words. “A vacation.”

“Bet you haven’t had one of those in a while,” Natasha teases, and he grins against his will.

“Bet you haven’t either. Should I ask if there’s any place you’d like to see that’s maybe free of brainwashing or angry Russian mobsters?”

Natasha makes a humming noise into the phone, as if she’s silently considering her options, and Clint imagines her leaning against the wall of wherever she’s stationed, threading a hand through a red curl while letting her brain run thoughtfully over the various countries and cities that he no doubt knows she’s visited at some point in her life.

“Well,” she starts, and when she finally speaks again her voice teetering on the edge of something he could almost call tender, “I’ve never been to the beach.”

 

***

 

It’s technically a lie – Natasha has been to the beach at least twice, on two separate occasions where she’d either poisoned someone or left them for dead. Still, that doesn’t stop Clint from finding himself at an oceanfront resort in Puerto Rico, sand between his feet and one hand tangled in her hair, which is finally starting to grow out to a respectable length again.

“Ever think you’d run off with a carnie?” Clint asks as he digs his foot deeper into the sand, watching the soft grains slip through his toes. Natasha grins.

“You’re not a carnie,” she points out, leaning into him, and her sun soaked body feels warm and solid against his own skin. “You’re a book seller. Soon to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent again.”

“And what does that make you?” he asks, staring out at the surf, at the waves that break into small white capstones and edge closer and closer to the shore in a way that, for other people, Clint figures might be unsettling. Natasha shrugs, lifting her head. Her bullet wound is almost fully healed, a small light scar crossing her shoulder when the sun illuminates her skin, and her eyes look bright and green and alive for the first time.

“Well, it doesn’t make me a spy,” she says carefully, turning so she can relax more comfortably against him. “And it doesn’t make me an assassin. So I guess you’ll just have to figure it out. What does this make me, Clint Barton?”

His mouth works to find words while his brain thinks about how she makes him feel, how she’s made him feel since the very first time she walked in the door of his shop, how he’s felt ever since she let him take care of her on the floor of his small, dirty bathroom, trusting him to put her back together at the point when she very well could have fallen apart.

“What about a partner?”

Natasha turns her head to meet his eyes, smiles, and the fact that Clint doesn’t even have to think about whether it’s real or not makes him believe that finally, for the first time in his life, things might actually be alright after all.

“Partner,” she repeats, settling back against his skin. “I’d say you’ve got yourself a deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> For visual reference, if anyone is interested: [A History of Russia](http://www.amazon.com/A-History-Russia-Nicholas-Riasanovsky/dp/019534197X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410704750&sr=8-1&keywords=a+history+of+russia) (all 816 words of it), [Russian Fairy Tales](http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Fairy-Illustrated-Alexander-Afanasyev/dp/1908478683/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1408727780&sr=8-2&keywords=russian+fairytales), [Complete Sonnets by William Shakespeare](http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Sonnets-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486266869/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410705767&sr=8-1&keywords=shakespeare+sonnets), [the tattoo Clint talks about](http://www.tattooseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Feather-Tattoo-Meaning.jpg), [the tattoo Natasha has.](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YkD1NPai6As/UcxQ6wTadCI/AAAAAAAADJs/7oT2wNa6H20/s415/ouroboros.gif)
> 
> Comments/kudos appreciated!


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